One Last Look At An Icon

I am digressing from my normal DVD reviews to talk about a movie coming soon to theaters everywhere, “Batman: The Dark Knight”. 

I am a huge Batman fan but I have to admit when I first heard that they were doing another edition about the Joker vs. Batman I was less than thrilled.  In my mind I was thinking it has already been done and quite nicely by Jack Nicholson so why do it again.  But then the tragic and untimely death of Heath Ledger brought it back to the forefront.  Not only was it known as the next Batman movie or the one with the darker Joker but as the last movie that Ledger completed and it a few ways was almost blamed for his overdose seeing that he had started taking sleeping pills while filming.

This put a new spin on the movie for most.  It made everyone want to rush out and see it except me.  I was thinking it would be too hard to watch such a talented and rising stars last performance.  Yet as it gets closer (July 18^th is the opening date) and more interviews are done with the cast and previews are shown I find that I am wanting to see it if for no other reason than to find out if it is as good and everyone is saying or if they are just immortalizing a wonderful actor taken in his prime.

Yes, I am a Heath Ledger fan and was truly sadden by his shocking death but I don’t know if I believe any Batman performance could be good enough for an Oscar but that is what they are mentioning in regards to the installment.  It isn’t that I don’t believe that the actors in any of the Batman movies aren’t great actors; it really has more to do with the story and the fact that it is based on comic book characters.  Not that there is anything wrong with that but Oscar doesn’t tend to favor the less traditional candidates.  True I think Ledger had the potential to have a long and amazing career but I would hate to see an award given simply because that actor died without ever reaching his or her full potential. 

Which leads to why I know feel as though I have to see the movie.  I don’t want to feel that I am being judgmental toward the academy or the actors that have mentioned Oscar in the same breath as Ledger.  Personally I have a hard time seeing him win for Batman when he didn’t for “Brokeback Mountain” and if you saw that movie you have to know that that was an Oscar performance if ever there was one.